A city councilor was shot Friday as she left her home in the southern state of Guerrero, authorities and local media said. Claudia Sheinbaum became the first wife to win the country’s presidency last week.
Esmeralda Garzon, a councilor in the municipality of Tixtla, was shot dead as she left her home, local media reported. The Guerrero state attorney general’s office said in a statement that police had been sent to the scene to collect evidence and find those responsible for the shooting.
Garzon, who led the equality and gender commission in Tixtla, was elected under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Reuters news agency reported. She ultimately supported Sheinbaum’s Morena party in the June 2 election, according to social media posts. Garzon himself did not participate in the elections.
Her killing comes days after the mayor of a city in western Mexico and her bodyguard were murdered outside a gym. Yolanda Sánchez Figueroa was assassinated just hours after Sheinbaum became president.
Most violent election in modern Mexican history
At least 23 political candidates were killed during their pre-election campaign, according to official statistics, which was the most violent election in modern Mexican history, according to Reuters.
But some non-governmental organizations have reported an even higher toll, including Data Civica, which counted at least 30 killings of candidates. According to Data Civica, the death toll rises to more than 50 people when family members and other victims of those attacks are included.
A few days before the elections, one mayor was hopeful murder was caught on camera — an assassination that occurred just one day after another mayoral candidate fell in the central Mexican state of Morelos murdered.
The week before, nine people were killed in two attacks on mayoral candidates in the southern state of Chiapas. The two candidates survived.
Last month six people including a minor and mayoral candidate Lucero Lopez, were killed in an ambush after a campaign rally in the municipality of La Concordia, neighboring Villa Corzo.
In April, one mayor was hopeful shot dead just hours after she started campaigning.
